myself also becoming a little irate with the cycling and, again, did not engage but simply witnessed the irritation rising. What I found fascinating was the futility of it all. The same cycle of thoughts creating the same feelings of irritation and resulting in the same experience that was essentially fruitless. There is a saying that insanity is doing the same thing expecting a different result, or something along those lines, and this was a perfect example of insanity.
You may wonder why I did not shift or change this and, honestly, I couldn’t answer you that, as I was merely observing it for interest sake. I must say that there is also something profound in being the witnessing presence. You are not engaged in the activity of the mind but simply observing it, you are in the realm of the deeper essence of you and connecting into that which is greater than the mere Human existence. You are connecting into the Spirit of yourself that carries the eternal wisdom of all life, you are connecting into creation itself, that which some call God. You are accessing the God force that exists within you.
The idea that God is separate from us is preposterous to me. Why? Quite simply because our bodies themselves are an expressive reflection of the Universe itself, everything that we are made of is what the Universe is made of. The intelligence that is at work within our bodies is magnificent and while we may know and understand how everything inside it all works, we still don’t truly know the true “how” of how it works, it is a phenomenon unto itself. We do not need to tell it when to breathe, it simply breathes; we do not tell it when it needs to eat, it tells us when it is hungry; we do not need to tell it to process the food that we eat, it does it regardless; we do not need to tell it to operate, it operates beyond our need to control it and if this is not the force of God within then I do not know what is and, furthermore, it is the same force that exists within the Earth, within our solar-system, within our galaxy, within our Universe, how is it feasibly possible that we are separate from it or each other? How is it conceivable that the God force could not exist in, through and all around us?
I would just like to say here, that I do not use the term God in the traditional, religious sense. I do not use the term God as a representation of a male figure that we worship. I use the term God to encompass both the masculine and feminine forces that are a distinct feature of our reality. I use the term God to acknowledge the force that is beyond our Human understanding and exists within the mystery of life. I use the term God force so you may read these words with an open mind and an open Heart without prejudice, bias or dogmatic belief structures. I also do not denigrate any religious belief structures but simply do not own them as mine, yet also acknowledge the teachings that lie at the essence of the religions I have encountered. That being said, I also invite you to not take anything that I write as truth, for this is merely the truth that I hold for myself and I, in no way, am here to impose what is true for me onto you. You may find that you resonate with some of what I share and wholeheartedly reject other concepts that I may place here for your contemplation, and that is all in perfection. I am not here to sway you from your beliefs or even unhinge you from your story. I write this to offer a perspective, an opportunity to widen your scope of vision and begin exploring the depth of who you are. I write this to invite you to dive deep and perhaps meet yourself in a new enlightened way. You see, enlightenment is not simply about knowing the God “out there”, it is about meeting the God within in order to truly know Divinity. It is to make lighter the journey through knowing that all that you seek is right there in the centre of your being, laying in wait for you to open the door and meet its light. This is the path of self-awareness; it is the journey to meet God and the realisation that this force also lives in your Heart and you need not look outward but simply turn inward.
The beauty about belief is that it is changeable, mutable and malleable. Think about it, the beliefs that you had as a child of the Tooth Faerie, the Easter Bunny, Santa and so on are distant memories shelved in the department of Faerie Tales. The beliefs that you held as a teenager, filed in Adolescent Mysteries perhaps. The beliefs you held in your twenties, thirties and so on (depending on how old you are, of course) have all shifted and changed as you have grown and expanded through life. There will be things that I write on these pages that may change for me in the coming years as my perspectives widen and my awareness deepens, in fact, who knows something in me may shift in the process of placing my inner contemplation onto these pages and something I write here in this chapter may no longer be true for me through the coming chapters or by the time I have completed this book. This applies to the ingrained beliefs that we hold of ourselves and our lives both consciously and unconsciously. Our conscious beliefs are obviously easy to work with, it is the unconscious ones that are the tricksters as they play out beneath the surface and we simply say that this is our personality or who we are.
I was driving with a friend and she shared with me a story of unhappiness in her relationship and dissatisfaction in the fact that she felt like she should be able to share everything in her life and about herself with her partner. I could recall a time when I felt precisely the same way, yet I had learned that it was not necessarily the truth, not for me anyway. My perspective on this is that we have different people in our lives to fulfil different roles. We share certain parts of ourselves with certain people, which does not necessarily mean that we are being pretentious, it just means that we meet each other in our similarities. We have friends or family members that we may be a certain way with that we quite possibly do not express with others. For example, my younger Sister and I have an incredible knack for being ridiculously silly and find ourselves outrageously funny and while my partner and I are silly together it is not quite the same. This is the specialness of the relationship I have with my Sister. My partner and I have a playful relationship with each other that involves silliness expressed in a different way that does not satisfy the type of expression I have with my Sister and vice versa. We have people that we connect with on all manner of levels and each interaction is going to be unique and fulfil an aspect of who we are and who we choose to be. When we can look at it this way it takes the pressure off one person to satisfy all areas of our lives and opens us up to healthier relationships.
As I shared this perspective with my friend, I asked her three questions, which I wrote down because they were quite poignant in moving through the story, the feeling and the belief. I now use these questions with people that I work with in groups or individually as they are a quick and effective way of cutting to the core of what arises for us and recognising what we believe and how much energy we have vested in these beliefs. When we open to this inquiry, we are able to choose what we wish to believe, whether or not it is worth the output of energy and if we would like to reclaim this energy and let the belief go.
Firstly, we need to frame the story, then we ask the questions.
1 What are you feeling?
2 What is the belief attached to the feeling?
3 Is that belief true?
An example:
Story: “Life is a real struggle right now and there is not enough money to make ends meet. I am having to get payment extensions on bills, and I am getting really stressed out because I am working so hard to get ahead.”
1 What are you feeling?“I am feeling frustrated, annoyed, confused and maybe even angry.”
2 What is/are the belief/s attached to these feelings?“I should be further ahead in my life at this age with a solid career, family and money in the bank. I was told that I shouldn’t bother because I am going to fail anyway.”
3 Is the belief true?“No.”
The interesting thing about these questions is if the same story or belief keeps showing up, we are receiving regular reminders to choose differently and change our perspectives. Another reason they may keep coming up is that we may only be scratching the surface and we can look at how honest we are being with ourselves. When we are experiencing something that creates discomfort in ourselves and we ask these questions, if we truly dig deep the answer to the third question is most often going to be no. I
